Future Bakery "Factory Outlet"

Bakery: Future Bakery (Factory Outlet location)
Address: 106 North Queen St, Toronto, ON
Website: N/A
Style: Ukrainian, Eastern European
Price: $-$$

Man, I really haven't gone bakery hunting in the last few weeks, and this is pretty much my one hit in the last month or so. Nevertheless, it's still a bakery in need of a review. ^-^

I did actually review the St. Lawrence Market location of Future Bakery beforehand, but seeing as it was quite different in terms of baked goods, I decided to write a separate one. Suffice to say, considering the Factory Outlet is mere blocks away from Dimpflmeier's factory outlet, I was expecting big things from this pretty big place. In this sense, I was pretty disappointed, since this wasn't actually a bakery, but a giant deli selling everything from bread to cold cuts, cosmetics and a whole variety of MC dairy products (it's the same owner). Products on the shelves are mostly Ukrainian with a generous smattering of Polish and Russian goods as well. While the variety of bread products was pretty impressive and interesting, the sweets area was... pretty pathetic. Granted, it was Saturday afternoon, but even the space looked like it couldn't fit much more. The selection wasn't very exciting: overpriced ($20/kg is a little ridiculous considering they sell the cheese for $10/kg at the back of the store) cheesecake and Ukrainian doughnuts were the most unique things there, although they also sold some danishes and cookies and a few other goods that didn't particularly stand out to me. Yes, to be honest, I was quite disappointed. Considering that they had so much Ukrainian and E. European goods in the store, I was hoping the bakery would be the same, especially when Ukrainian baked goods are really good (I just took out a cookbook from the library *-*), so there was no excuse for these guys!!!!

I bought three items while there, just to give it a try: the first was for my brothers, an pretty large, pretzel-shaped almond ring (95 cents) which one brother said was "hard as a rock" and the other thought it not bad, that it got better the more he ate it. Let's just say that no one was particularly thrilled with it and both heartily recommended the same thing from Benna's. The price, however, like everything else purchased was pretty fair.

Second on the list was by far the best thing purchased on this trip, an apple danish ($1.49) made of puff pastry, stuffed with apples and coated with glaze and rock sugar. In taste, it was pretty good, especially in comparison to everything else we bought, although the dough tasted a little too.. pre-fab for me. I can't describe it any other way. Still, in comparison to everything else, I can at least say it was tasty.

Lastly, I had to take the poppy seed bun ($1.49, I believe) as per custom, but man, was I disappointed with this one. I recall my review of the St. Lawrence market location and saying how the mass was very Russian tasting (this is something that only makes sense to me XD) and had a lot of raisins in it. I was, quite frankly, expecting the same thing here, but it wasn't. This was actually one of the worst poppy seed buns I had, as neither the dough nor the poppy seed "mass" had any flavour whatsoever. Usually, the poppy seeds are mixed together with sugar or honey and butter, sometimes with flour to make it more dough-like, but this tasted like the top of a bagel: plain, unflavoured ground up poppy seeds teamed up with plain, oddly bland (considering it's just supposed to be sweet yeast dough, I was surprised) dough. Wasn't thrilled with this.

Verdict: their breads are pretty good, but I'm not going back to Future Bakery for any sweets. Actually, the only real reason I'd return here is to take advantage of their amazing prices and variety of baker's cheese of MC dairy, because ha ha ha it's finally affordable to bake your own cheesecake... or to try the frozen imported cakes they have for $22 (they were sooooo tempting me even then), but as to the baked goods: no thanks. :(

Rating: **